"Dedicated to exposing the lies and impeachable offenses of George W. Bush"

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into
an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled
political accountability and concoct theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have
embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's
insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the
executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In
other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and
beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As
Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime
against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Seven soldiers were wounded in the attack Thursday in the Rasheed district, a mixed
Sunni-Shiite area of southern Baghdad where U.S.-led forces recently stepped up pressure on
extremists. The commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad suggested the ambush could be part of an
escalating backlash by Sunni insurgents.

Those deaths brought to 99 the number of U.S. troops killed this month, according to an
Associated Press count. The toll for the past three months — 329 — made it the
deadliest quarter for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. That surpasses the 316
soldiers killed during November 2004 to January 2005.

MURPHY, Texas — A sting in which police teamed up with "Dateline NBC" to catch
online pedophiles was supposed to send a flinty-eyed, Texas-style warning about this Dallas
suburb: Don't mess with Murphy.

It is the first time in nine "Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator" stings across the country in
the past year and a half that prosecutors did not pursue charges.

"Dateline" has made prime-time entertainment out of contacting would-be child molesters over
the Internet, luring them to a meeting place, and videotaping their humiliating confrontations
with reporter Chris Hansen.

The Constitution Receives Another Reprieve.

Here's a snip from the story and the sworn affidavit:
"SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An Army officer who played a key role in the "enemy combatant"
hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while
being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence.

His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism
by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve
officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only "generic"
material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific
information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he
served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and the intelligence
agencies."

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed course Friday and agreed to hear claims of Guantanamo detainees
that they have a right to challenge their detections in American federal courts.

The decision, announced in a brief order released Friday, sets the stage for a legal fight that
appears likely to shape debates in the Bush administration about how to close a detention center
that has become a lightning rod for international criticism. More than 370 men are being held at
the naval station on a scrubby corner of Cuba.

The unusual order, which required votes from five of the nine justices, rescinded an April
order in which the justices declined to review a federal appeals court decision that ruled against
the detainees.

The court offered no explanation for the change. But the order meant that the justices will
hear the full appeal in their next term, perhaps by December. The court rarely grants such motions
for reconsideration.Some experts on Supreme Court procedure said they knew of no similar
reversal by the court in decades.

Anti-Americanism is extensive, as it has been for the past five years. At the same time, the
image of China has slipped significantly among the publics of other major nations. Opinion about
Russia is mixed, but confidence in its president, Vladimir Putin, has declined sharply. In fact,
the Russian leader's negatives have soared to the point that they mirror the nearly worldwide lack
of confidence in George W. Bush.

Global distrust of American leadership is reflected in increasing disapproval of the
cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy. Not only is there worldwide support for a withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Iraq, but there also is considerable opposition to U.S. and NATO operations in
Afghanistan. Western European publics are at best divided about keeping troops there. In nearly
every predominantly Muslim country, overwhelming majorities want U.S. and NATO troops withdrawn
from Afghanistan as soon as possible. In addition, global support for the U.S.-led war on
terrorism ebbs ever lower. And the United States is the nation blamed most often for hurting the
world's environment, at a time of rising global concern about environmental issues.

The human toll: More than 3,500 Americans have died in Iraq; more than 25,000 have been
wounded.

The financial cost: $500 billion in spending, at a rate now of more than $2 billion a week.

There is another price: More than two-thirds of active duty Army brigades are rated not ready
for their mission because of manpower or equipment shortages, most of which can be directly
attributed to Iraq. It is a readiness domino effect.

The numbers for the National Guard are even more alarming: Nearly 90 percent of Guard units not
in Iraq are rated not ready for missions.

"Right now the United States does not have any depth of strategic reserve in our ground
forces," military analyst Michelle Flournoy says. "Meaning we don't have ground forces ready and
willing to deter a conflict or keep a small problem small."

Payments to the firm, one of the country's biggest government contractors, soared by millions
of dollars a month, the Post says, reaching $30 million, or 15 times the contract's original
value, by December 2004. At that point, DHS lawyers warned that the deal had gone "grossly beyond"
estimates and advised the department to end the contract and allow other companies to bid for the
work.

But it was more than a year before any competitive bidding took place. In the meantime,
payments to Booz Allen more than doubled again, thanks to another no-bid deal, to $73 million.
Finally, in spring 2006, DHS broke the work into five separate contracts, worth an additional $50
million, and solicited bids.

The rift among Bush's advisers mirrors a GOP intraparty struggle that erupted in March when 57
Republican lawmakers -- including Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), a former Bush housing secretary --
signed onto bills that would allow states to opt out of key No Child Left Behind mandates. The
legislation, which the White House has criticized, draws on a proposal Bush himself made in early
2001 but quickly dropped.

Many Republicans contend that the administration's criticism of an idea it once proposed shows
the White House has strayed too far from conservative principles. Conservatives, some of whom
supported the law only out of fealty to Bush, feel freer to speak out against No Child Left Behind
now that the president's popularity has sagged and many parents and educators have complained
about what they call onerous federal mandates.

By December 2004, payments to Booz Allen had exceeded $30 million -- 15 times the contract's
original value. When department lawyers examined the deal, they found it was "grossly beyond the
scope" of the original contract, and they said the arrangement violated government procurement
rules. The lawyers advised the department to immediately stop making payments through the contract
and allow other companies to compete for the work.

But the competition did not take place for more than a year. During that time, the payments to
Booz Allen more than doubled again under a second no-bid arrangement, to $73 million, according to
internal documents, e-mail and interviews.

Not only did Saddam not have WMD, but our intelligence agencies said if he had them he wouldn't
use them against us unless we attacked him. In other words, even if we assumed the worse case
scenario, Saddam was never a threat to the US.

The report by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, did not
name its targets but several of its conclusions appeared aimed at the United States and Britain,
which invaded Iraq in March 2003.

"Despite some skepticism from many areas within the international community, in hindsight, it
has now become clear that the U.N. inspection system in Iraq was indeed successful to a large
degree, in fulfilling its disarmament and monitoring obligations," said the unit's 1,160-page
summing-up report.

Despite the substantial number of Iraqi security forces and their increasing willingness to
fight -- demonstrated by rising numbers of casualties -- their progress toward taking full
responsibility for the nation's security remains mixed, according to a report on the investigation
by the oversight panel of the House Armed Services Committee. U.S. commanders now predict that it
will take years and tens of thousands more Iraqi soldiers and police to achieve that goal.

The Pentagon "cannot report in detail how many of the 346,500 Iraqi military and police
personnel that the coalition trained are operational today," according to the 250-page
report. Details of the document were provided to The Washington Post by congressional staff
members.

It seem this right wing court isn't extremist enough for Scalia. Surely this court has failed
to protect the constitution from the blatant crimes of the Bush White House so now they're giving
corporations the right to free speech and denying basic rights to individuals, such as the right
to petition their government.

In the campaign finance case, he accused Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of "faux judicial
modesty" for writing an opinion that in Justice Scalia's view effectively overturned the court's
2003 campaign finance decision "without saying so." The clear implication was that the chief
justice lacked the courage or honesty to overturn the precedent openly as Justice Scalia himself
would have done.

And Justice Scalia was scathing in his criticism of an opinion signed by Chief Justice Roberts
that limited, but did not completely abolish, the right of taxpayers to go to court to challenge
government expenditures that promote religion. Justice Scalia would have gone on to shut the
courthouse door completely, not simply limiting but overturning the precedent that the new ruling
invoked.

In private, Bush administration sub-Cabinet officials who have been instrumental in formulating
and sustaining the legal "war paradigm" acknowledge that their efforts to create a system for
detainees separate from due process, criminal justice and law enforcement have failed. One of the
key framers of the war paradigm (in which the president in his wartime capacity as commander in
chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and
balances), who a year ago was arguing vehemently for pushing its boundaries, confesses that he has
abandoned his belief in the whole doctrine, though he refuses to say so publicly. If he were to
speak up, given his seminal role in formulating the policy and stature among the Federalist
Society cadres that run it, his rejection would have a shattering impact, far more than political
philosopher Francis Fukuyama's denunciation of the neoconservatism he formerly embraced. But this
figure remains careful to disclose his disillusionment with his own handiwork only in
off-the-record conversations. Yet another Bush legal official, even now at the commanding heights
of power, admits that the administration's policies are largely discredited. In its defense, he
says without a hint of irony or sarcasm, "Not everything we've done has been illegal." He adds,
"Not everything has been ultra vires" -- a legal term referring to actions beyond the law.

The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has
been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in
Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best
hope, Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat," and that requires more intelligence and leadership
than Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced
that America has a crisis in leadership at this time."

More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting that "U.S.-led
soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday." After five years of
war the U.S. controls one-third of one city and nothing else.

Key Republican senators, signaling increasing GOP skepticism about President Bush's strategy in
Iraq, have called for a reduction in U.S. forces and launched preemptive efforts to counter a
much-awaited administration progress report due in September.

In an unannounced speech on the Senate floor Monday night, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the
ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. military escalation begun in
the spring has "very limited" prospects for success. He called on Bush to begin reducing U.S.
forces. "We don't owe the president our unquestioning agreement," Lugar said.

The harsh judgment from one of the Senate's most respected foreign-policy voices was a blow to
White House efforts to boost flagging support for its war policy, and opened the door to
defections by other Republicans who have supported the administration despite increasing private
doubts.

After spending years telling us "terrorism" is the biggest threat facing the country, Bush
still hasn't given government agencies directives on how to do their primary mission. The war on
terror is a joke - there are people who hate us, but that's nothing new. What different is this WH
convincing the country that can or should kill every person who they think doesn't like us
(without a jury trial of course).

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A just-released report slams the federal government for failing to
coordinate the work of U.S. law enforcement agencies overseas to fight terrorism.

The Government Accountability Office found that in one country a lack of clarity about the
roles and responsibilities of the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency may have
compromised several investigations intended to identify and disrupt potential terrorist
activities.

The White House has long issued directives asking that U.S. law enforcement agencies assist
foreign nations' anti-terrorism efforts.

But the report finds that embassy and law enforcement officials told the GAO "they had received
little or no guidance" on how to accomplish that.

The issue of roles and responsibilities "remains unresolved and is still subject to ongoing
debates within the administration," it said.

"Moreover, more than 100,000 pages of government documents released in response to (an)
American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act request reveal that a pervasive and
systemic pattern of harsh interrogation techniques have been used by military personnel
indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay," the ACLU said in a statement
Monday.

"The documents include evidence that detainees have been beaten; forced into painful stress
positions; threatened with death; sexually and religiously humiliated; stripped naked; hooded and
blindfolded; exposed to extreme heat and cold; denied food and water; isolated for prolonged
periods; subjected to mock drownings; and intimated by dogs," the group said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high
school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human
rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.

The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk
with a young woman who handed it to him.

"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let
the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy
press secretary Dana Perino said.

When the GOP held the majority they said a lot of things and did none of them. What the GOP
says is irrelevant - they can't be trusted on any issue. What they do is more important than what
they say since the two are not compatible.

A day after Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar declared that Bush's "surge" policy of adding
troops was not working, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio sent Bush a letter "expressing his belief
that our nation must begin to develop a comprehensive plan for our gradual military disengagement
from Iraq," Voinovich's office announced.

Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and Voinovich is a member of
that panel. The Ohioan made his move even as Democrats were hailing Lugar for publicly criticizing
the Iraq war, saying Lugar had reignited what had seemed a stalled debate.

Threatening a government employee used to be considered a crime but when you can buy
politicians (and they can all be bought) law is irrelevant. In fact, its far worse than this. The
US Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations and unions have the right to "free speech"
(campaign contributions). Our founding fathers gave rights to individuals, not collectives but the
courts don't care what the Constitution says.

According to two former F.C.C. officials, Mr. Murdoch's chief in-house lobbyist at the time,
Preston Padden, confronted Mr. Hundt's chief of staff at a meeting at a coffee shop near the
agency's headquarters. Mr. Hundt would not be able to "get a job as dog-catcher" if the F.C.C.
took away a single News Corporation television license, Mr. Padden warned, they said.

Mr. Lott's book sold 12,000 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70
percent of all domestic retail and Internet sales. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of
Pennsylvania, received $24,506 from HarperCollins for his modest-selling book "Passion for Truth,"
according to financial disclosure forms. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, got
$141,666 for her book "American Heroines," which has sold better. All sit on either the Commerce
or Judiciary Committees that most closely oversee the media business.

BAQUBAH, Iraq — The U.S. commander of a new offensive north of Baghdad, reclaiming
insurgent territory day by day, said Sunday his Iraqi partners may be too weak to hold onto the
gains.

The Iraqi military does not even have enough ammunition, said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek:
"They're not quite up to the job yet."

His counterpart south of Baghdad seemed to agree, saying U.S. troops are too few to garrison
the districts newly rid of insurgents. "It can't be coalition [U.S.] forces. We have what we have.
There's got to be more Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.

The media is first and foremost lazy. So if they want easy stories they have to give money to
those who are in power. Dems are in power so they get the money. Did the media give to the GOP
when they were pushing GOP lies about WMD and White water? Who cares. They were pushing GOP
talking points instead of facts anyway. If the media had done its job we wouldn't be in Iraq and
we wouldn't have $9 trillion of debt and THEY wouldn't have spent years chasing after phantom
scandals during the Clinton years.

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the
start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission.
Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal
causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.The donors include CNN's Guy Raz,
now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S.
troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O'Reilly at Fox;
MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street
Journal's weekend section; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the
ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV's former presidential campaign
correspondent.

Another self-evident truth: Liberals didn't take us into a war that was based on lies and
liberals didn't support that war shortly after the war started and the lies were exposed. However,
conservatives and centrists supported the war before and after the knew it was all a lie (no WMD).
This pro war, anti truth stance is now considered the "center" We're screwed.

The media refused to listen to the 156 members of Congress who opposed the war from day one.
Instead they listened to only the majority - a majority that was 100% wrong.

Secondly, we have to deal with another reality. We have almost $9 trillion of debt. We didn't
get that debt because we were overtaxed but instead because we were undertaxed. Every tax cut
proposed by either party was based on verifiable lies. Lies the media failed to expose.

Whenever you use the word "left" in American politics, you feel almost compelled to add
quotation marks. Today's left is not talking about nationalizing industry, abolishing capitalism
or destroying the rich. What passes for "left" in American politics is quite moderate by
historical standards

This approach is about abstractions, not concrete political problems, and it misses the dynamic
in American public life, which is the move away from the right and a discrediting of the
conservative era. The political "center" of today is not where the "center" was even five years
ago.